> It's a moral responsibility to cooperate with law enforcement when they are trying to track criminals like pedophiles, terrorists or similarly malicious persons.
It is a moral responsibility only when you agree that what the criminals are doing is morally wrong. For many current overreaching definitions of "pedophile" or "terrorist", for instance, I would disagree with this, and I would find it morally wrong to cooperate with law enforcement.
(This is talking about morals, not the law. Cooperating may, of course, be a legal obligation.)
Somewhere else in this thread I also note that I understand the definition of "terrorist" and "pedophile" may mean different things to different people in different countries, from both a legal and personal moral standpoint. However, does that then mean your moral obligation to cooperate with law enforcement should still not kick in once you personally feel something wrong is happening? The thing is, I am not speaking about a "legal" obligation here.
I support offensive hacktivism which is illegal in most respects, though not all. My "legal" obligation is to give up good people who are trying to exact moral justice for crimes they have knowledge are occurring, but for which no "legal" justice can be obtained, for whatever reason. However, I would not feel personally morally just in giving up those hacktivists. But if the persons in question the police are pursuing are criminals who partake in child pornography, or terrorist activities against innocent people - and my personal definition of both these terms falls both within American legal definitions and within my own personal definitions - then again, I believe it is my moral obligation to cooperate with law enforcement.
I accept the complexity of human beings and the difficulty of fully defining right and wrong, but I also know that helping bring criminals who can bring nothing positive to humanity and are also performing hurtful acts against innocent people is a necessary process within the ecosystem of human social evolution.
> does that then mean your moral obligation to cooperate with law enforcement should still not kick in once you personally feel something wrong is happening
My point was that some of the definitions of "terrorism" and "pedophilia" used nowadays do not match something which I personally feel is wrong. More precisely, they match things that I personally would never want to do, but for which I do not consider it good that they be forbidden.
For instance, in some countries such as the UK, "partaking in child pornography" is interpreted as "watching drawings or computer-generated imagery of sexual acts among minors", a victimless crime, which I do not feel is morally wrong. While I am not myself interested in this, I believe people have the right to create, exchange and consume such material, and I find it immoral to limit their right to do this, or to help law enforcement doing so.
In other countries such as France, "terrorism" can be interpreted as "expressing support for acts such as the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, or posting djihadist propaganda online". Once again, I believe people have the right to express such opinions, and that it is morally wrong to prosecute them for it, or help law enforcement do so.
Further, in many situations, cooperating with law enforcement to track illegal or immoral acts means supporting mass surveillance measures which are both inefficient for these goals and extremely dangerous for individual freedoms. So, even in situations where the acts are unquestionably morally wrong, helping law enforcement is extended to a very broad meaning with which it is possible to disagree.
It is a moral responsibility only when you agree that what the criminals are doing is morally wrong. For many current overreaching definitions of "pedophile" or "terrorist", for instance, I would disagree with this, and I would find it morally wrong to cooperate with law enforcement.
(This is talking about morals, not the law. Cooperating may, of course, be a legal obligation.)